Bruce Springsteen - Classic or Dud ?

Two T-Bones and a microphone

I think that was before T-Bone dropped his Froom-isms. Glancing at his production credits, I'd suggest Burnett didn't really go au natural until closer to the late '90s. c. Gillian Welch at al. Before that he still sounded pretty fussy to me, as much as I love some records he produced. But I'm thinking more of the kinds of hands-free stuff that Joe Henry did, or does. He had that streak of Betty Lavette, Solomon Burke, Aimee Mann, Allen Toussaint, and so on, all pretty no-fuss. The Dap-Kings, they had the right idea, at least. Play to the genre's strength, which is not slickness and gloss. Well, I mean, not the '60s and '70s at least.

Hell, "The Seeger Sessions" sounded pretty band-in-a-room great. Or even "Letter to You," for that matter. I can see why Bruce could be taken in my by tech, really playing to his perfectionist tendencies. Like, he'd probably think, why would I want any imperfections when this dummy I have producing can make everything clean and pristine and perfect? Meanwhile Neil Young and Bob Dylan are giving Bruce the side eye. Like, you're missing the point, Bruce!

Would have been great if this album were all '80s R&B, like Kool and the Gang's "Joanna" or Oran "Juice" Jones' "The Rain" or Dazz Band.

They're not that new anymore, but two of Al Green's latter day albums (including one produced by Questlove) did a good job of capturing the vintage sound performance-wise - the actual recordings just miss simply because they're using modern gear that's never going to sound "right" but I don't think Blue Note would've been fine marketing a new album that truly sounded like an old recording they unearthed from the '70s.

Not all modern gear. I remember when they made those records they made a big deal about pulling his old mic out of the cabinet, the same model maybe even the same one, he used way back when.

Committing to vintageness is actually not that difficult with modern gear - it just takes restraint.

Like, sure, bring out your old Neumann or whatev. But once you put it into a modern signal chain, you will be tempted to mess with it after tracking. Don't.

I am currently working on a project where there two room mics and a DI and that's basically it. Whenever I think of going to the plugins menu, I instead drink some wine and walk around the block. When I come back, I realize that it was fine.

Chitlin Circuit Double-entendre -filled Soul 2004 (and onward) Theodis Ealey's "Stand Up In It" is a song of the year

Some folks on the Chitlin circuit southern soul thread could have helped Bruce too

Unrelated- saw Uruguayan, Spain based guitar pop singer musician Jorge Drexler at Lincoln Theatre in DC Friday night, and suddenly in one of his Spanish language songs, he added a bit in English from “Hungry Heart”

I was trying to recall someone I came across some years back who was considered the French Springsteen, or German Springsteen or something, and I found this:

https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20190612-bruce-springsteens-of-the-world-unite

I would've picked Paul Kelly for Australia' Springsteen, but then again I'm not familiar with Jimmy Barnes. Anyone else know his stuff?

Only from The Lost Boys, lol. But yeah, Paul Kelly is totally the Aussie Springsteen.

Paul Kelly is a better comparison as he writes & sings & has that troubadoury general vibe

Barnesy does write songs himself but is more commonly known as singer i would say, more like a Steve Perry ie iconic big voice but a lot of fame tied to early band success

I too only knew Barnes from the INXS song “Good Times.” Then — maybe 30 years later — I heard another version of the song on the radio, which the dj announced was the original (there’s an original?!) by the Easybeats (I love the Easybeats!) Blew my mind. “But the guy on the chorus sounds like Steve Marriott!” Turns out it’s Steve Marriott.

Bruce has covered the Easybeats’ “Friday On My Mind” and INXS’s “Don’t Change,” so it’s all a rich tapestry.

Bruce is on Fallon show 3 nights in a row

Bruce @springsteen performs “Do I Love You (Indeed I Do)” 🎶

Watch the full performance ⬇️https://t.co/2bOv7WOSX3#SpringsteenOnFallon pic.twitter.com/7lImPmF4Sb

— The Tonight Show (@FallonTonight) November 15, 2022

A couple of people asking, why didn't he just get backed by the Roots? He likes the Roots, the Roots would have ruled.

He was on Graham Norton, too:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lx0GllhVJks

Ha I remember hearing Casey Kasem tell that story on American Top 40 in the ‘80s…and I also remember it being Denver, but evidently it wasn’t.

He’s no Tyrone Davis but his “Turn Back the hands of time” on Fallon is ok

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3ypTDSRVZs

I'd be interested in hearing him talk about the troubles he's had with his drinking but otherwise zzz

Love me some Tyrone Davis, afraid to listen to that.

xpost lol Didn't we do this already? There is no indication at all that Bruce has ever had a drinking problem.

Born to (D)Run(k)

Yeah, the only anecdote we have is when he was offered shots by some fans while riding around in that park one winter.

It would be tough to hide. Like George Harrison and Bob Dylan come to mind as two people who obviously had drinking problems that were easy to notice, from numerous anecdotes to the way it crept into interviews, etc.

Mister state trooper

Please don't breathalyze me

Where can I read about George and bob’s drinking ?

I don't know if there are any articles focusing on it, but it just comes up a lot. George even joked in an interview "I needed the hepatitis to quit drinking." (Rolling Stone, December 1976)

Dylan drank heavily for a good part of the '80s and the beginning of the '90s, his road manager at the time Victor Maymudes has gone on record about that, adding that Dylan "just stopped on a dime" and got sober in 1994. (IIRC he was supposedly seen drinking a lot when he toured with Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers in the '80s.)

haven't read her memoir myself but Psychology Today blog asserted :

Pattie Boyd's memoir, "Wonderful Tonight," describes Boyd's leaving her marriage with Beatle George Harrison after he became morose and uncommunicative, alternating between compulsive chanting and meditation followed by drug and alcohol blasts, to take up with Eric Clapton.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/addiction-in-society/200809/did-pattie-boyd-require-expert-explain-alcoholism

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zoWwimT9qWI

Bruce did “Nightshift” for his 3rd night on Fallon show

I'm sure that's better than the recorded version, but I'm not going to bother. Here's a reminder of what Bruce is like doing a soul cover with his band:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jbkt0YIsdy4

And that's ignoring the medleys and epics he did earlier in his career.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_LJbKcihdTU

wtf there are like seventeen people there on stage (re: the Fallon show)

File under "ok but why?"

Bruce by committee.

The shock and awe approach.

Just a reminder that at the undeniable peak of their power the E Street Band numbered ... 7 people.

A lucky number in lucky town.

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/bruce-springsteen-covers-lp-fan-outrage-ticket-prices-1234632658/

-I’ve got to ask you about the ticket on-sale.

Sure.

-It caused a bit of an uproar in the fan community because some of the tickets used dynamic prices, and some tickets hit $5,000. Did you know in advance about those price points and dynamic pricing, and do you have any regrets about that?

What I do is a very simple thing. I tell my guys, “Go out and see what everybody else is doing. Let’s charge a little less.” That’s generally the directions. They go out and set it up. For the past 49 years or however long we’ve been playing, we’ve pretty much been out there under market value. I’ve enjoyed that. It’s been great for the fans.

This time I told them, “Hey, we’re 73 years old. The guys are there. I want to do what everybody else is doing, my peers.” So that’s what happened. That’s what they did (laughs).

But ticket buying has gotten very confusing, not just for the fans, but for the artists also. And the bottom line is that most of our tickets are totally affordable. They’re in that affordable range. We have those tickets that are going to go for that (higher) price somewhere anyway. The ticket broker or someone is going to be taking that money. I’m going, “Hey, why shouldn’t that money go to the guys that are going to be up there sweating three hours a night for it?”

It created an opportunity for that to occur. And so at that point, we went for it. I know it was unpopular with some fans. But if there’s any complaints on the way out, you can have your money back.

-As you said, the fans were pretty upset. Backstreets said it caused them to suffer a “crisis of faith.” They wrote an op-ed where they said that dynamic pricing “violates an implicit contract between Bruce Springsteen and his fans.” How did you feel about all that blowback against you?

Well, I’m old. I take a lot of things in stride (laughs). You don’t like to be criticized. You certainly don’t like to be the poster boy for high ticket prices. It’s the last thing you prefer to be. But that’s how it went. You have to own the decisions you have made and go out and just continue to do your best. And that was my take on it. I think if folks come to the show, they’re going to have a good time.

_Do you think in the future you’ll avoid using dynamic pricing, where the prices change in front of your eyes during the initial on-sale?

I don’t know. I think in the future, we’ll be talking about it, of course (laughs). It changes from tour to tour. We will be coming back. I’m sure we’ll be playing outside somewhat. That’ll be a whole other discussion when that comes around. I don’t want to say anything now, but we’ll see what happens.

A bunch of other nuggets in here, like no plan for a "BitUSA" box, but maybe a "Nebraska" box, and also this:

I have a box set of five unreleased albums that are basically post-1988. People have always wondered…People look at my work in the Nineties and they go, “The Nineties wasn’t a great decade for Bruce. He was kind of doing this and he wasn’t in the E Street Band…” I actually made a lot of music during that period of time. I actually made albums. For one reason or another, the timing wasn’t right or whatever, I didn’t put them out.

They’ve kind of gathered. I spent time over one of the past winters completely cleaning out the vault. I have a series of Tracks albums that eventually we’ll release. Some of it is older stuff that the band plays on, and some of it is newer stuff where I was conceptualizing during that period of time. It’ll give people a chance to reassess what I was doing during that time period. Also, a lot of the stuff is really weird. There’s going to be people that really…I can’t wait to see the response to some of it (laughs).

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/bruce-springsteen-covers-lp-fan-outrage-ticket-prices-1234632658/

ARGH! Well so much for that...it's weird because it's clearly in his contract with Sony (the one that leaked from that infamous hack) that he's supposed to deliver album box sets, but I guess the other things he's talking about fulfills that.

I think he basically says in the interview he would if he could, but all the good Born in the USA stuff ended up on Tracks, and they really don't have much left over except for lots of alternate takes, of which he is not a fan. Plus he says there is virtually no good footage of the tour, though he wishes there were.

There's actually quite a bit out there on bootlegs, but tbf they're not something that would've made the final album.

Just off the top of my head: Protection (given to Donna Summer), Follow that Dream, Klansman, Don't Back Down, Sugarland, Unsatisfied Heart, Seven Tears, One Love, Delivery Man, Betty Jean, maybe studio versions of Seeds and Light of Day if they exist...

Ah well, it probably just means the boots we have cover all that's left.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BhqH4U-m0Ro

Also History Is Made at Night (at one time the album's working title) would've been a great title for the box set had it happened.

People have always wondered…People look at my work in the Nineties and they go, “The Nineties wasn’t a great decade for Bruce. He was kind of doing this and he wasn’t in the E Street Band…” I actually made a lot of music during that period of time.

I'm not sure why I keep reading this in Trump voice.

There's tons of good BITUSA stuff that's been leaked but never released. All the stuff birdistheword mentioned plus Child Bride, Richfield Whistle, Drop on Down, Fugitive's Dream, the Nebraska version of Pink Cadillac... And I don't think the Nebraska version of I'm on Fire has ever been released even as a bootleg, but it must exist.

First time I heard of this:

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2022/nov/19/bruce-springsteen-cover-reignites-row-over-lost-northern-soul-classic

Official upload of the original:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RijdLIGomTs

Thanks… kind of funny thing, these dudes arguing over who “discovered” this song, but I it’s cool one of them did.

Dudes, Welcome To Northern Soul, where there's hundreds of those stories.

Kind of feeling cool rn, because I first heard and danced to it at (now sadly long defunct) local Soul Nights 4-7 years ago.

I kind of want to ask my friend Mr. Fine Wine about this but feel like he will only get annoyed.

Meh, I forgot, he already weighed in.

Caryn Rose otm:

_Do you remember that 90’s movie, The Commitments? It was a bunch of Irish kids who form a soul band. (Glen Hansard was in it!) Anyway, the soundtrack was super-popular, but when I made a tape of the originals for people who adored the movie, they didn’t like it and they didn’t care. They liked the versions of the songs they heard in the movie. Only The Strong Survive is for those people, and there are more of them than there are of people like me. _


https://jukeboxgraduate.letterdrop.com/c/only-the-strong-survive🕸

i read that review & it annoyed me bc it’s not the Commitnents fault that you have dumb friends, even my own fuckin ~family~ knew & appreciated the original songs & that was ~why~ they liked the movie/soundtrack ie do not come for the commitments please and thank you

i don’t feel any kind of way about these bruce covers. dude just wanted to do something he hadnt done before & he seemed to enjoy doing it. i mean maybe it’s an old age cash grab, it’s fine
not everything is going to be a bullseye, i just can’t get worked up about it

i mean rod stewart labored over those motown songs & no one wanted that

all these millionaire dudes do it eventually

Across the spectrum of good-to-bad Motown covers, I think the majority are probably bunched into the "bad" end.

But I think Springsteen's "Do I Love You" is more towards the good end, and he already had a solid one in "War," especially with the intro taken into account: "in 1985, blind faith in your leaders will get you killed"

And Rod actually did one of the greatest Motown covers ever - "I Know I'm Losing You" is amazing! (Faces actually backed him on that even though it's on a solo album.) And "This Old Heart of Mine" was fine both times he recorded it, if not on the same level.

Springsteen's "War," like the best of his covers, is the perfect pairing of performer and material. See also: "Jersey Girl," "Trapped," "Summertime Blues," "Santa Claus is Coming to Town," pretty much all the covers he did live before he started doing a ton of covers. So, I saw him do "Take It Easy" the night Glenn Frey died, and it was boring. I don't like Springsteen's Prince cover, or his AC/DC. Imo his INXS and Bee Gees covers were inspired and transcendent. "Dream, Baby, Dream," too. But I saw him at the Harley-Davidson 105th anniversary show up in Milwaukee, and he and the band spontaneously busted out "Wooly Bully" and it ruled.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WdPr0MDd9kE

Springsteen isn't in the same class of R&B singer as Rod Stewart, not even close

Ha, hard disagree. But I'm not much of a Rod guy.

Springsteen is an okay singer not a great one by any stretch, the end of the day he is who he is because he's a songwriter but not a great interpreter of material as proven by this mediocre record.

Ha, I'm not defending this boring record from a way past his prime 73 year old that I'm not going to listen to. I just love his covers he used to do. Dunno if that makes him a great interpreter or not, but on that front imo he's definitely on par with, say, John Fogerty.